August 19, 2007

My Last Blog Post from Oregon

Here I am, sitting in the airport in Portland, trying to figure out what to blog. It's been nagging at me all day (I need to stop promising blog posts at specific times of the day) and I've been trying to decide which of the gazillion things I want to talk about.

These worries and concerns disappeared the instant I made it through security, an experience that I consider extremely blogworthy. Why? Well, let me start by saying this: Trying to get all of your electronics onto an airplane in carry-on leads to suspicion amongst baggage checking people. Here's what happened . . .

I notice a sign that says I need to take my video camera and my laptop out of my bag. Taking the laptop out isn't such a big deal, but the video camera is at the very bottom of the bag so I have to take all sorts of power cords and AC bricks out of my bag as well. I threw in my digital camera for good measure. I sent that through, no problems. Well, turns out that portable hard drives need to come out too, but instead of asking me to take it out they just pulled it out. I'm really hoping that when I hook it up it's not broken!

I sent my second carry-on through next, the one containing all sorts of gamecube controllers and a power strip. The security guy hesitated, but decided that it was all ok. The real can of worms was the Wii. We sent that through, in its metal briefcase, and quickly realized that THAT was a mistake. I had to take the Wii (which I had packed in its original box) out of the briefcase, out of its box, and send it through the x-ray with the controllers. Then I had to send the metal briefcase, having to repack all of it at the other end. Oh, and lets not forget that I also had to take off my belt, shoes, watch, cell phone, and iPod. After finally making it through I packed all of my electronics back in my messenger bag, put my Wii all back together, and put all of my clothes back on. All in all, a 15 minute process. Luckily there was no line, otherwise I'm thinking there might have been pitchforks and torches bobbing ominously in the distance.

So, here I am, repacked and clacking happily on my laptop, waiting for our flight that was supposed to leave at 11:00 pm but is now scheduled to leave at 11:20 pm. That's ok, at least there's free Wi-Fi!